


Health Code Violation

by whereismygarden



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Laboratory, M/M, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 02:45:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5989327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The AU where Kylo Ren is Luke Skywalker's bitter, barely coping PhD student, and Hux is the dick from Environmental Health and Safety who is about to ruin his research.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Health Code Violation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silential/gifts).



> mentions of self-harm.

                Luke was out. Luke was usually out, whether or not he had a meeting to go to. Where he went was largely unknown: he could have been at a conference or smoking blunts in the arboretum like an undergrad for all they knew. He wasn’t either, but he could have been, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Kylo preferred it that way: talking to his PI more than once a month was an imposition. Partially because he couldn’t get anything done lately. A string of failed transformations, failed Westerns, and failed extractions had set him back at least a month: if he had had larger plants, he could have harvested more tissue and gotten more RNA, but whatever. They would have to grow again. In the meantime, he had a fucking phenol-chloroform extraction to do, because Luke couldn’t manage to get enough funding to buy a few PCR purification kits.

                Rey was crouched over her bench, fucking around with a mess of metal and tubing and the disassembled guts of an electrophoresis machine. Her neat, precisely written notebooks were open next to her, to drawings of whatever she was trying to make. Kylo might have admired her organization, except that he had a week’s worth of indecipherable text in his own lab notebook from a year ago that he was trying to puzzle out. What did “do 3x but no EB, half h2o then 3 hr rt” mean? Why was there a huge star and red ink that said “CAREFUL” with no explanation next to this note?

                “Rrrrgh!” He slammed his hand down, making the door of the fume hood rattle and a few bottles slosh dangerously.

                “Shut up, Ren,” Rey said, in her aggressive yet impersonal way. Why Luke had decided to take another student when he was never around was beyond Kylo. Why Rey had decided that a falling-down lab with no funding was worth her time was also beyond him. What wasn’t beyond him was the fucking annoyance it was to have someone else in the lab, sucking up what remained of the money and producing nothing but tangled messes of repurposed equipment from the eighties that only Rey could use.

                It was very annoying. Rey was about twenty two, with a fresh face and an energy that seemed to come from enthusiasm instead of rage. Rey was focused and tireless, and Kylo could just imagine her being enough to rouse Luke from his disinterest. Everything about her made him angry, from her skill to her attitude to her admittedly pretty face. He had ventured to indicate some interest shortly after she joined, because she was pretty and smart, but a few days later she had arrived with her boyfriend in tow to show him her in-progress work. The guy was as annoyingly chipper as she was: the two of them together were downright sickening, chattering about their projects.

                Rey’s co-PI was Han Solo, and Finn’s as well. At that news, Kylo had wanted to shoot himself, and both of them, and managed to contain himself to burning his fingertips in nitrogen. Then he broke the mortar, not entirely on purpose.

                So Rey was there to berate and distract and enrage and sexually frustrate him, and she was there all the time. She was a new grad student, didn’t she have class?

                Of course, the one time left for class was the time he could have used her unflappable nerve and general fire. Not that he was nervous or unfiery, just that she could direct it into things besides breaking supplies and pulling twenty-hour stints in lab. He was proud of his twenty-hour work binges, he got a lot done, even though one time he had fallen asleep on his feet, and woken up as he hit the floor, tubes scattering around him.

                If it was so important to be sane, Luke could fucking stop him from doing it.

                Rey left for class: he noticed because she pointedly bid him good-bye and he growled something in response. Thirty minutes later, he was wishing she was still there to provide some backup.

                It was a visit from EHS, the fuckers. Rey was, for once, in class. Her shit was all over her bench. Kylo never went over there, so he had no idea what kind of violations were lurking. But there were, as Hux (nickname Sux, Fucks, Cucks, depending on the maturity of the lab) was sure to notice, plenty of other violations glaringly obvious. Kylo always left the door locked, but the obnoxious grey shirts some of the university offices had was visible through the partially papered-over window, and the prissy knocking gave it away.

                He stormed over to the door and opened it partially, straightening to his full height. It was easy to loom over Rey if he wanted, but Hux was on the tall side.

                “Luke’s not here,” he said, not waiting for the other man to speak.

                “I don’t need Dr. Skywalker’s permission to come in. This group missed its appointed time three months ago, so you can move aside or risk serious consequences.”

                As much as he resented Luke, Kylo didn’t want to have his project halted, so he let Hux into the lab.

                “I see we keep corrosives and acids out on the bench, with no overflow containers, instead of in locked cabinets,” Hux said, his eyes like chips of dirty ice flicking over the benchtop.

                “Rey was using them yesterday,” Kylo lied without hesitation. “She’s new, and she did her undergrad at Arizona State, so you can’t expect her to be very good.”

                “Doesn’t matter,” Hux said, and pointed to his stacks of culture plates. Sure, some of them weren’t lidded properly, but who cared, they were failed transformations and dried out to boot. “Throw those out immediately, that’s a health risk.”

                Kylo very deliberately snapped on a pair of new gloves and cleared the plates into the autoclave bin, glaring at Hux. Then he reached out and put his hand on Hux’s, gesturing with the other toward’s Rey’s mess.

                “I have to admit, Rey’s project is ingenious, you should have a look—“

                Hux shook off his hand with a revolted recoil that had to be exaggerated.

                “What is wrong with you?” he snapped, hurrying to the stained sink and rinsing his hands. Unfortunately there was no hand soap in the bottle—when necessary, Kylo had been using the ethanol—and there were some fragments of glass in the bottom of the drain. He should have dumped in a bucket of ice.

                He went back to his bench, making an effort to ignore Hux and his pretentiously official windbreaker and clipboard (as if he were some kind of sports coach) as they made their lab around the lab.

                “I’m going to need to schedule a meeting with Dr. Skywalker,” he said.

                “You do that,” Kylo said. He would be lucky to get an email out of Luke.

                “There are several health violations in here. You need to leave the lab and get checked for exposure to carcinogens and other toxins.”

                “Like fuck I do.” He needed to let his TOPO clones sit for a while and then do transformation again. He’d be god-damned if he had to do another extraction. “I’m not an idiot. I know what’s on the bench and I know what’s actually dangerous, regardless of what the manual says.”

                Hux’s mouth looked as pinched as an old woman’s watching teenagers walk by her, swearing. He straightened his jacket and looked Kylo up and down, eyes narrowed. Kylo smirked at him. The man was narrow-shouldered and a few inches short of him. There weren’t many people who could move him if he didn’t want to be moved. Hux would not be one of them.

                “The lab’s projects are in danger of being suspended,” Hux enunciated, tone such that he seemed to be taking pleasure in the announcement. “You need to listen to me.”

                “And you’ll un-suspend us if I listen to you?” Kylo said scornfully. Hux did have real power though, and his icy eyes were still lit with some disgusting kind of pride. As if shutting down worthwhile work, that put no one who knew what they were doing in danger, was a good thing.

                “I’ll be able to amend my report if you clean everything up, now,” he said. “And simply insist on weekly inspections for a while, until I’m satisfied there will be no future problems.”

                “I don’t have time for your weekly inspections,” Kylo retorted.

                “You shouldn’t need time if you do thing right,” Hux said, voice as even as ever. “So get cleaning or get forcibly removed.”

                If it was a choice between humiliation and having his work taken away, Kylo would choose humiliation. Narrowly.

                He put bottles away and affixed proper labels to his bottles and jars, and wiped down the benches. He filled the whole autoclave cart, and picked the glass out of the sink with long tweezers. Hux just stood there meanwhile, hands folded behind his back, cold pale eyes missing nothing. Not the expired reagents on the shelves, not the beaker of solution the pH meter was resting in, nothing. He didn’t shy away from pointing any of this out, either, leaving Kylo grinding his teeth and shaking with rage.

                It was all he could do to keep from actually crying: it was a stupid, childish instinct, to cry from anger or humiliation. He was thirty years old, for fuck’s sake. He could feel Hux’s cold gaze on him the whole time, like he was some—some lord watching his servant clean up. It turned Kylo’s stomach and made his chest and hands cold and hot with fury. Even Rey couldn’t anger him like this, because her disdain always came from a place not intended to deliberately make him feel like shit. Hux was enjoying himself.

                “Good,” Hux said evenly, when things were still disorganized but no longer a violation of university policy. Kylo made himself turn and meet his eyes, aware that his own were hot and wet and raging.

                Hux’s were chilly as ever, but amused in a way, and the set of his mouth hinted towards a smile.

                “Get the fuck out,” Kylo said flatly, the urge to hit something—the centrifuge, Hux, himself—almost unbearable. It was going to be the centrifuge, probably, and then himself. He could already tell. His hands were aching. He stripped his gloves off and hurled them into the trash.

                “One more thing,” Hux said, and came close to him. There was no mistaking the amusement in his eyes, now. Amusement and something else that he couldn’t quite place, but made him bristle all over. “Over here.”

                At the far side of the room, where the thermocycler and the SDS-PAGE molds were, were the computers and the nanodrop, and chairs. The desk/study side of the lab, largely occupied with unused equipment, most of it slowly being dismantled by Rey.

                “What the fuck do you want with this?” Kylo asked, and Hux sat down in one of the chairs, giving him a very confident look.

                “Before I leave, you can get on your knees and suck me,” he said, as if that was completely reasonable.

                Kylo felt himself reach the limits of his rage and get achingly, terribly turned on, both at the same time. And when he was this angry, he had to break things. So he bent down, caught Hux’s EHS windbreaker in both hands, and tore it down the front, nylon rending with a low tear. Satisfying, as was the outrage on Hux’s face, but not enough. Crashing to his knees on the tile knocked down some of the anger, as did the sudden, vicious grab of a hand in his hair.

                “ _Fuck_ ,” Hux hissed, twisting Kylo’s hair painfully, but the lack of control in his voice, the heat of lust in his eyes made him less intimidating. His pale hands were shaking at his belt and fly. Kylo let himself smirk, got some of his own back.

                “You can do it,” he said, in the voice of someone encouraging a small child, and got a slap in the face. God, yes. The sting of Hux’s palm was electrifying. “Tell me, Hux, how many health code violations is this? How many anti-harassment rules are you breaking?” Another slap, hard enough to reflexively bring tears to his eyes and make his ears ring.

                It was a hurried, sloppy affair, though if Rey came back, Kylo thought he might rather like to have her walk in on this. Hux kept his bureaucrat’s soft hands clenched in his hair or on his jaw, and Kylo lost himself in the feeling of hot, hard flesh under his tongue and lips, the intoxicating taste of precome, the occasional struggle to breathe as Hux pushed his head down hard enough that his cock brushed against Kylo’s throat.

                “Fuck,” Hux muttered again, hips shifting up. Kylo grabbed him by the hips, slowed the movements of his lips, stopped letting Hux push him around. He might like it but the man should know that he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want to.

                “Fuck, Ren, you bastard, you fucking cocksucker,” Hux rasped out, as Kylo lingered over him, holding him still easily. “Come on, come on.” His voice approached a whine. Kylo flicked his tongue down, sliding over his balls, and felt Hux’s thighs shake against his hands. He wanted to laugh, but the truth was that he was turned on himself now. And in the back of his mind, it was nearly time to put his cloning vector on ice. So he let go of Hux, nearly choked himself on the man’s cock, and let Hux come down his throat, hands clawing at Kylo’s face.

                “Now you can get the fuck out,” Kylo said, getting to his feet. “And you can leave your address, I’m going to fuck you tonight.” And he turned away and walked back to his bench, flipping on the water bath as he went.

                He didn’t expect it, but Hux actually left his address, after dumping his torn windbreaker in the trash bin. Kylo, finding the scrap of paper in his notebook, bit through his lip while plating his transformation.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the jargon, and the weird tone: this is my first Star Wars fic, and there was no part of it that I worked on while not wasted on tequila. I hope to continue with more wholesome stories about Rey and Finn's adventures in grad school.


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